Saturday, June 24, 2017

If you read the TPI on a regular basis you are aware of our position (the humane position) on Medicaid and Medicare. The Human Services program may not exist as a life-sustaining from which you derive benefits, but it is a program which offers quality of life opportunities for millions.

As you view what follows, see if you can actually avoid the reality of the GOP (and their nascent leader: Trump) as purveyors of death panel ideology leading got killing policy. We start with a few graphics for quick delivery of information to the rational person.

Our ending video segment is a piece from last night's The Last Word. Ari Melber filled in for Lawrence O'Donnell. Melber was literally brought to tears as he sat listening to one American who's quality of life (and maybe his actual life) is enhanced via Medicaid.

MSNBC

Michael Phillips, who has spinal muscular atrophy and whose life literally depends on Medicaid, shares his fears about what Medicaid cuts could mean for his care:

The GOP Brand is showing its colors as a critical tool for Americans top .01% (ers) who will derive major financial benefits via healthcare laws signed by Trump. VOX linked.If you have a bit more time, MSNBC's Joy Ann Reid ran a segment this morning which totally remedies the essence of the GOP.

Sunday, April 9, 2017

US history has archives on journalist or media talking heads who supported, propped-up, and facilitated the Bush war against Iraq. One such pundits is the ever-present and sickeningly war hungry Bill Kristol.

Bill Kristol was the most vocal of highly compensated media talking heads. In 2001, Kristol became a number won class A cheerleader for an invasion of Iraq. The conservative hawk seems to posses a history of anti-Saddam Hussein rhetoric which dates back through the 1990s. Recall, Bush and company fabricated a WMD lie to facilitate what eventually became the most tragic and horrific extension of US imperialism since the Vietnam Lyndon Johnson's Gulf of Tonkin call to war. US history offers a closed case on Kristol's "way-off" role in guiding the nation to a war which came close to the economic death of the US.The mark of a true conservative is to never look back and by all measures never ever express or acknowledge major policy mistakes.

CNN (2014)

Unappologetic

Even after years of public statements of remorse from all parties who lead the US and the World into an invasion of Iraq, Kristol spoken openly (in 2014) about "re-invading Iraq. "RE-INVADE IRAQ?"

Alas there is much more. If you have a few minutes to review a Media Matters piece of a look back at those in media who advanced Bush's WMD charge into Iraq, Kristol is the most vocal and the most visible.

After Trump's finger tap of Syria's President Assad, an uncomfortable number of US media darlings and pundits spoke unabashedly in celebration of the launching of 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles. An attack which is being reported as a $60 plus million dollar hit against the defense budget with little consequence against Assad's ability to deliver more chemical ordnance.

At the very top of my personal disgust with millionaire media darlings and talking head pundits, CNN's Fareed Zakaria stands out as the most asinine in his response to the attack.

We offer a summary segment of certain media responses along with remarks from MSNBC's Brian Williams and former anti-terror expert Malcolm Nance.

Nance appeared on this Saturday's AM Joy show.

Speaking of Brian Williams:USA Today and other media are joining a chorus of concern for Williams's penchant for hyperbole regarding the missile launch. "Beautiful?" Really MSNBC?

Brian Williams refers to this Pentagon video of missiles going to kill people as "beautiful" 3 times in 30 seconds pic.twitter.com/KBb3tP8qHT

Wednesday, February 15, 2017

When has the US Voter and Non-voter handed the rest of us an international embarrassment and neo-political danger? Trump's number one former General and "Friend" of Putin Mike Flynn tendered a (forced) resignation last night. The resignation should be no surprise. I am seeing and hearing reports DIA officials issued a report to both President Obama and then-President Elect Trump regarding the prospect of Flynn having compromised himself via interaction with a Russia political official. Yesterday Trump's number two "presstitute" responded to MSNBC's Steve Kornacki with a comment about Flynn's continued high standing with Trump. Within hours Flynn's status in the White House fluctuated and changed like an out-of-control roller coaster. The ride finally landed with the Obama hater and Hillary Clinton-hating former general ousted via Trump. "You're Fired" via the hand in your resignation route.We offer an MSNBC broadcast segment from early this morning. CAUTION: the segment contains embarrassing backtracking and waffling.

How could a competent president or for that matter a capable professional person totally ignore such reports? Take it to another level. How could a corporate CEO so ignore reports of a bad apple in the basket? Since we can assume Trump isn't simply stupid, we should assume he ignored the reports for personal gain (and possible reward to Flynn). Of course, we could allow ourselves to lean really deep and consider Trump is so involved with a love of Russia and equally affinity for Putin, he may have been actively involved in Flynn's phone conservation with the Putin deputy. As the story unfolded last night on MSNBC and CNN both flooded their broadcast with guest after guest for opinion and perspective. Of more importance consider the following video and the level of hypocrisy inherent in Trump/Flynn. LOCK HER UP?

If I may, allow e to post a few MSNBC segments on Flynn and the Trump web into which he surely became entrapped. Recall Flynn's military career came to an end along with that of General McChrystal's release from active duty by President Obama for inappropriate acts (mouthiness and machismo to a reporter). Flynn became an Obama and Clinton hater to the max.Breaking News from the New York Times

MSNBC's Chris Matthews and McCaskill (D-MO) on legal aspects of Flynn's Russian interlude and what is starting to appear something of a real cover up. Watch Flynn at the RNC again. Well, this is what happens when one steps of his phallus on ego.

Joy Ann Reid and a must watch MSNBC segment with former US INTEL and military specialist/operative: Malcolm Nance.

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Well, it appears John McCain is surely not going to simply facilitate sweeping Trump and Flynn's Russian interludes under a rug.

We will revisit this issue throughout the day, of course.What Did He Know And When Did He Know It?

Nugent now is campaigning with Texas Republican gubernatorial candidate Greg Abbott. This led CNN’s Wolf Blitzer to question whether the Abbott campaign understands the history of such language. (Abbott has not distanced himself from Nugent.)

"That’s what the Nazis called Jews to justify the genocide of the Jewish community," Blitzer said in a Feb. 18, 2014, interview. "They called themuntermenschen, subhuman mongrels. If you read some of the literature that the Nazis put out there, there is a long history of that specific phrase he used involving the president of the United States."

Blitzer’s interview made waves through the political world, so we wanted to check his assertion about the words "subhuman mongrel."

In his CNN interview, Blitzer cited the work of Nazi party official Julius Streicher. But our research shows Blitzer is correct well beyond an individual Nazi party official. The words subhuman and mongrel were used interchangably but generally had the same derogatory meaning.

David Myers, a historian at the University of California at Los Angeles, said Adolph Hitler used the word "untermensch" or subhuman in his book Mein Kampf in 1925.

"From that point forward, it was part of the Nazi lexicon," Myers said. "That and ‘mischling’ or mongrel, were intoned with daily regularity by the Nazi propaganda machine."

The man Blitzer mentioned, Streicher, was an early Nazi party leader in Nuremberg and Franconia and a fierce anti-Semite. In the mid 1920s, he began publishing a tabloid aimed at the working class called Der Sturmer, "The Attacker." The front of each edition carried the slogan, "The Jews are our misfortune."

"Regrettably, there are still many people today who say: Even the Jews are creatures of God. Therefore you must respect them. But we say: Vermin are animals too, but we exterminate them just the same. The Jew is a mongrel. He has hereditary tendencies from Aryans, Asiatics, Negroes, and from the Mongolians. Evil always preponderates in the case of a mongrel."

In 1899, the English anti-Semite Houston Stewart Chamberlainwrote extensively about physical characteristics and race. He claimed "the Semites belong to the mulatto class, a transition stage between black and white" and were "a mongrel race which always retains this mongrel character."

In 1942, the Nazis printed an infamous pamphlet, Der Untermensch, which translates to "subhuman." The Holocaust Research Project translation provides this front panel quote from the head of the German SS, Heinrich Himmler:

"As long as there have been men on the Earth, the struggle between man and the subhuman will be the historic rule; the Jewish-led struggle against the mankind, as far back as we can look, is part of the natural course of life on our planet. One can be convinced with full certainty that this struggle for life and death is just as much a law of nature as is the struggle of an infection to corrupt a healthy body."

Mark Roseman, director of the Borns Jewish Studies Program at Indiana University, said the German word for subhuman, untermensch, did not tend to be used by the Nazis in the adjectival form. So the words weren't often used in combination.

"But the underlying claim, namely, that Nazi policies were preceded, facilitated, and accompanied by language that compared Jews to animals, and declared them to be subhuman, is of course absolutely correct," Roseman said.

Our ruling

Blitzer said the words "subhuman mongrel" were used by the Nazis to "justify the genocide of the Jewish community." We found ample evidence that the Germans used those words -- in their own language -- to repeatedly describe Jewish people in the build-up to the Holocaust.

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